


Needle in a Digital Haystack

by Itsuey



Category: Thor (2011)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-02-13
Updated: 2014-05-20
Packaged: 2017-10-31 02:35:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/338942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Itsuey/pseuds/Itsuey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The end to the war came at a price; Laufey had to give up his son as a partner for Thor. When he foresaw the whole of the nine realms falling under Thor's powers, he sent Loki to Midgard instead with nothing but his name.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> this isn't beta'd, in fact I just wrote it about 5 minutes ago, I'm tired, I'm full of caffeine and I imagine this will have a fair few mistakes. Fear not though, for I do have a spell checker. And Tales of Asgard to check the words Chromium doesn't think are words.

Odin raised his staff high above his head, the weak blue glow that Jotunheim gave off reflecting on the polished but bloodstained metal as he towered over Laufey. The battle had come to a stand still, the ground littered with the corpses of both armies, frost giants blending into the frozen land and Asgardians rapidly freezing over until they looked just as natural. Everyone left standing was watching their altercation.

"This can end now Laufey, it can end now with no more bloodshed, or it can go on until we have destroyed Jotunheim and everyone upon it."

"Neither of us wants any more deaths," Laufey said with a small sigh. He took Odin's hand and allowed the Allfather to help him to his feet.

"Why do we not settle this in the ways of old? I understand you have a child not much younger than my own Thor."

"Loki? He is a runt, he will not survive his first month without constant care and attention. He will never be strong or tall. Also there is the issue of his not being a princess," he finished with a slight sneer.

Odin waved away the comment with a sweeping gesture from the staff he still clutched in his hand. "It matters not his gender, I was given to understand your males were capable of baring children."

"That they are, but his stature may prevent him from surviving such an ordeal."

"We have the finest medics in the nine realms in Asgard, it would be no problem for them to assist in a difficult pregnancy. As for the matter of his stature, well, I am sure you would agree that someone of nearer Asgardian height would be more appropriate for my son."

Laufey regarded him with cold, indifferent eyes and for a moment Odin was glad of his partially Jotun blood preventing his veins from freezing as he stood. "Very well. We shall have a treaty until he is an adult in the eyes of both our laws. Then you may return for Loki and we will discuss terms for a more permanent solution. Before the years are up, you will not set foot on Jotunheim."

"I agree to your conditions. I presume you will give us time to mourn our fallen before you banish us."

"You have one day."

Laufey returned to what remained of his palace, trying to ignore the blood and various body parts, some more recognisable than others, strewn around the wasteland that had been his home less than two days prior. Only a few of the inner rooms remained and it was within one of these he found his firstborn with the travelling wise woman who had sought refuge when the first horns sounded.

"He has a bright future ahead of him, your son. Not so bright as the man you have just betrothed him to however."

He was tempted to strike the woman and send her away, he had no time for those who claimed to be able to see the future, only the Norns could do that, and they spoke so deeply in riddles that it was almost impossible to understand the future when they told it to you.

"What do you mean by that?" He asked instead, watching her carefully.

"He will be rich and well looked after, but he will not be loved, he will be feared and despised, everyone will know his name and none but the king of Asgard and Jotunheim will be able to control him."

Laufey paused to watch his young son struggle in the blankets he was encased in. "Thor would rule Jotunheim? That is not something I would willingly agree to."

"If your first born marries him there is no way to oppose it, unless you plan to fight Asgard again."

"I can not. We may be strong as individuals, but they have far larger armies and can pull reserves from all over the nine realms. No. Loki can not be allowed to marry Odin's son, with Jotunheim and Asgard under his rule, he could conquer the whole nine realms. There must be a way to stop it."

Silence fell for several minutes, broken only by the groans of a few unfortunate souls not yet succumbed to death's charms, but too far gone to be saved.

"What of Midgard?" He asked, turning to gauge her reaction and found her gone, as though vanished into the frozen air. Had she ever been there in the first place? Or was she just a hallucination brought about by one too many bangs to the head and exhaustion? No matter, real or not, she had given him a solution, and it was with no regret that he wrote _Loki_ across the baby's tiny chest and tucked him back into his blankets, leaving him in the branches of Yggdrasil. 

"Remember this Loki, Odin is the only reason you are alive right now, if you didn't have political use, you would have been left to the elements. None of the nine realms are kind, Midgard least of all." He didn't stay to watch the tree whisk away his firstborn.

Eternities later, or perhaps only a few mortal years, a small thunderstorm in London brought with it a young boy, unkempt and mute, a blanket wrapped around his hips and his name written on his chest. He sat down upon the steps of St. Michael's orphanage and waited.


	2. chapter 1

The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea was a quiet one on an early Sunday morning. Apart from the general bustle of London and the comings and goings on the main road, there was hardly a sound to be heard and certainly nothing of interest for the young boy hanging out of a second storey window on Kensington Gate. As the last house on the road, number 29 had an excellent view across the open car park and junction to the small row of shops along Gloucester Road. Not that he was allowed to go there, any more than he was allowed to venture into the small patch of woodland behind the house and for a 10 year old boy, that was just boring. 

He could always jump out of the window, hop down onto the balcony and shimmy down the drainpipe like they did in films. He looked down the side of the porch and saw the open hole in front of the basement that he would inevitable fall into and settled for leaning on the sill waiting for anything to happen. Last week the delivery driver for the grocer had almost backed into an expensive car parked illegally in the loading bay but today there was nothing of interest.

“Edward!”

The young boy leapt back from the window, trying to look as though he hadn't just been leaning out of it as his mother opened the door. 

“Oh there you are, Nanny and I have been looking all over for you. Come on, it's almost lunch time. Go and tell your brother.” She bustled out again looking agitated and grabbed the butler who happened to be walking past, talking rapidly at him about something to do with Albert Hall. 

Edward slipped past the pair and made his way over to the far corner of the house where his brother resided, high up in what used to be the servants' quarters. He knocked on the door and entered without waiting for a response.

“What do you want Edward? Can't you see I'm busy?”

In the dark gloom of the room he could just make out his brother, curled over his desk, staring intensely at his computer screen, the eerie glow making his cheek bones look even sharper than ever. Edward could have passed for being the biological son of his parents; similar bone structure and wavy brown hair, but Loki, he was all sharp angles and long pitch black hair, his brother's opposite in every way.

“Mother says it's lunch time. And didn't Dad tell you to get off the computer hours ago?”

“No, he told me to stop playing on it. I'm working.”

“Doesn't look much like work. Looks like you're talking to your geeky friends.” He knew he shouldn't wind his older brother up but it was so much fun sometimes.

Loki let out a growl and the temperature seemed to drop several degrees. “I'm conferring on a group project little brother, I know you're hardly the sharpest knife in the drawer but that does require talking to other people. Now get out.”

“It's lunch time.” Edward crossed his arms and stuck his chin out in defiance.

“Urg, fine! I'll be down in a few minutes.”  
***

Lunch was always a formal affair in the Tudor household. Edward thought this exceptional fun and, unless he was in a mood, usually went about the meal in the most upper class manner he could muster. The effect was rather ruined by the fairly routine action of dropping food in his lap or the floor or ending up with tomato sauce all around his mouth when spaghetti bologneise was served. Loki thought it boring, time consuming, and pointless; he was sure his parents had things to do, he certainly had things to do and really, this was the 21st century, why couldn't he take a plate of food back to his room? Or better yet, why not have it delivered, that's what the butler was for surely?

“Now Loki, don't play with your food,” Henrietta chided as she watched him picking peas out of his kedgeree. “You should eat your vegetables.”

“I hate peas,” he muttered, head on his hand, flicking them to the side of the plate. He flicked one a bit too hard and it pinged off the rim of the china and landed on the floor. He could see the butler visibly sigh as he bent down to pick it up.

“Anyway, I thought we could all go and see The Phantom of the Opera at the Hall this afternoon. There's a dress rehearsal going on at 2 and your father's colleague has managed to attain permission for us all to go as Edward is too young to be allowed in to an actual performance.” She looked a bit annoyed at her youngest son being so young but got over it quickly and instructed that they should both run and change the moment they'd finished their lunch. Edward took this instruction to heart and ran out of the dining room, followed by their mother's shouts of no running in the house.

***

Loki hated operas. He hated them more than peas or the stupid suit he had to wear or bloody Karen Mitchell who kept leaving love notes in his locker. In short, he really really disliked operas and two and a half hours of some awful woman wailing on stage whilst holding onto the back of Edward's shirt to stop him vaulting over the seats was not the way he wished to spend his Sunday afternoon. Especially not when he'd been dragged to Church that morning.

Needless to say, by the time he was allowed back up to his room, following an excruciating half hour standing around in the foyer of the Albert Hall listening to his mother praise the lead violinist, a somewhat attractive young girl of 17, dinner and a lecture on how he should really be looking for a girlfriend, honestly, he was almost 16, he was not happy. 

It was 9 o clock in the evening and he'd not finished his piece of the project for tomorrow's meeting which meant that he'd have to spend the next couple of hours doing that rather than playing with his latest code project or talking to Saffron on World of Warcraft.

He threw himself into his seat with a sigh and pulled the computer out of hibernate, returning to the page he had been using for research hours before.

 _“Hey, you not coming online?”_ Saffron's message popped up in the corner of the screen, a small bloop noise emanating from the speakers. He switched them off and replied.

_“Sorry, parents dragged me out all day, got to finish some work. Maybe later.”_

_“Urg your parents suck, why can't they be cool and leave you be?”_

Loki snorted and left the message for a couple of minutes while he made some notes on nuclear power plants before Saffron's window flashed at him again.

_“They still cool for letting you come over next month? They can't say no, it's your birthday!”_

_“I haven't asked them yet.”_

_“Really? Fuck Loki you're useless!”_

_“I'll do it tomorrow.”_

_“You better. Or I'll have to come down there and kidnap you.”_


	3. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I thought it deserved a title, still not entirely sure about it, but Needle in a Digital Haystack was the best I could come up with at the moment.

Mrs Henrietta Tudor and her husband Frederick weren't the worst parents a child could end up with, Edward wished they were around a bit more to play with him and Loki wished they would cease dragging him to operas and theatre performances when he was trying to work, but on the whole they weren't that bad; at least they wanted them, Edward had pointed out one evening when he had been sat down and told the pair of them were adopted.

Loki had taken it far better than his little brother; he'd worked out years before that his parents weren't biologically his, he even had a vague memory of the adoption process and an overly hot communal dorm room filled with other boys around his age who picked on him whenever there wasn't an adult present. It was this memory still lingering around the edges of his mind that he knocked on the drawing room door frame and waited for his parents to acknowledge his presence. Despite his father being the official head of the house, everyone knew that Henrietta was the one who wore the pants in the relationship as it were, although the thought of his parents in any sort of relationship that didn't involve pants made him squirm a bit inside.

“What is it Loki? Have you finished your homework?” She waved her glass of wine in his direction, bidding him enter.

“I finished it a few hours ago. I actually wanted to ask your permission to go to a sleepover next month.”

“A sleepover?” She peered at him over the top of her glass suspiciously. “Most boys grow out of sleepovers when they're about 10 Loki.”

“I know, but it's my birthday and my friend Saffron wants to throw me a party-”

“Oh, so it's not a sleepover at all, it's a party.”

“It's a sleepover party.”

“A sleepover party,” she repeated, eyebrow raised. After a few seconds she sighed and took a sip of her wine. “Well I suppose it's all right with me, ask your father.”

“If that's what you want, at least we won't have to clean up after the chaos of you and your friends drinking again.”

He nodded and almost ran from the room, wincing at the memory of the last time he had hosted any sort of party. It had been a LAN party and Sam had somehow got hold of a bottle of his father's whisky, whether it had been given to him as a way of “manning him up” as he had said, or he had pinched it when no one was looking, nobody would ever know as the family had moved away shortly after, but at the time no one cared as they sat in a circle on the floor in the drawing room, sofas and tables pushed to the sides with computers set up in front of them and cables running through the house from one of the very few ethernet ports, passing the bottle around between themselves. The previous owner of the house had obviously not thought internet would catch on because it was woefully unprepared for the high speed fibre broadband Loki had insisted they install. The moment of shame, and perhaps the precursor to Sam's hasty exit from the area, had been about quarter to midnight, when, in the middle of a boss battle, the then 14 year old had made his rather garbled excuses and almost threw the headphones from himself in his hurry to get away, only to vomit rather unceremoniously on the kitchen floor when his inebriated brain forgot the layout of the house. Loki had sworn the butler was giving him evil looks for about a month afterwards.

He shook his head, vanishing the memory and pushed open the door to his bedroom, flapping at a moth that had entered through the window, drawn in by the glow of his monitor.

_Loki: parents said yes_  
 _Saffron: to your party?_  
 _Loki: yes_  
 _Saffron: awesome! Anyone you want to invite?_  
 _Loki: not really, was hoping it'd be a fairly small thing_  
 _Loki: I'd rather not have a repeat of year 9's fiasco_  
 _Saffron: lol, I remember that_  
 _Saffron: poor Sam, I wonder what happened to him_  
 _Saffron: I had a look for him on facebook a while ago, doesn't seem to be on there_  
 _Loki: I'm tempted to delete my facebook, bloody Karen Mitchell keeps requesting to be my friend_  
 _Saffron: LOL why don't you just add her, after all, you're going to need some company soon ;)_  
 _Loki: No. No no no no._  
 _Saffron: No? Got your sights set higher than Karen?_  
 _Loki: I wouldn't say higher, just more in a different direction_  
 _Saffron: Not a fan of those giant tits of her's? I'd love to know if they're real, nothing that big can be natural_  
 _Loki: I'd rather not think about it tbh._  
 _Saffron is typing..._  
 _Saffron is offline_

Loki rolled his eyes and twirled around to reach his phone. _Saff your internet sucks._ He didn't have to wait long for a reply; _Arg I know! I swear the fucking thing hates me. I need sleep, see you tomorrow._

He glanced over at his bed and then back at the clock. He had time to do some coding before he needed to sleep.

***

The sun was rising as much as it ever did on Jotunheim, its weak tendrils just stroking at the surface of the planet enough to light it but not enough to melt the frozen wasteland. Today was the day. Today, 16 years ago, Loki had been born and about a month from now would be the anniversary of the day he was sent to Midgard. And today was possibly the day Jotunheim ended.

“Laufey!”

Odin's familiar voice boomed out across the land and he turned in his tower to look out of the Eastern window. Sure enough, there stood what looked like the entirety of Asgard's army, resplendant in golden armour amplifying what little light there was to the point that it was almost blinding.

“You had better hope you stay out of sight my son,” he muttered to himself as he descended the spiral stairs. “I do not know what will befall you if you do not but I fear it will not be pleasant.”

“Laufey, the time has come. Will you not present to us your son?”

“Would that I could,” he beckoned two guards by the bottom of the tower to follow him out to meet the opposition. It wasn't much but having backup was comforting even when facing possibly the most powerful man in all of the nine realms. “But I fear he is no longer with us, the branches of Yggdrasil took him long ago.”

“Yggdrasil takes nothing which is not offered. Where have you sent him?”

He offered no response, instead turning his attention to the young man by Odin's side, taking in the long golden hair and flamboyant dress all of Asgard seemed to favour. Not a bad looking boy, he would almost have been happy for Loki to choose him as a mate were it not for his parentage. But this boy was the son of Odin, and no child of Asgard could be allowed to rule Jotunheim.

“You have betrayed our deal Laufey,” Odin called down from the saddle of his enormous horse, “But fear not, we will find Loki and when we do we shall return and I shall deliver upon my promise. Jotunheim will be destroyed.”

The crack of thunder which hadn't been heard for years on the frozen planet sounded and the Asgardian army departed along the Bifrost, leaving an intricate pattern he cared not to investigate and the state of semi-darkness they usually resided in behind. For a long while he stared at where Odin had stood until a snowstorm forced him to seek refuge back in the palace.

“No one can help you now Loki. The fate of the Nine Realms rests upon your shoulders, runt. I hope for all of our sakes you can stay hidden.”


End file.
